Mindful Musings

This is the first in a series of posts about technical papers and technical writing

Here is a technical article written by Joel Spolsky called Painless Functional Specifications It is a multi-part article that I had to read for my Software Specification and Design class. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have continued to follow Joel’s writings ever since.

Here is an IEEE paper called “The Physiology of the Grid: An Open Grid Services Architecture for Distributed Systems Integration”

To be completely fair (and well, for this argument to be really valid) the second piece is designed to be a technical “paper” that is submitted for publication to a technical journal or publication (IEEE in this case). Thus the extremely technical jargon and the familiar “paper” structure. In case you want to participate but are worried about the papers, you really do not have to read through those articles to understand my point of view. Just read a couple of paragraphs on each.

I really like Joel’s flippant style, his inclusion of concrete examples and his method of delivery. The second paper is cumbersome, difficult to read and even more difficult to absorb. I find any peice of writing to be useless, if reading it would mean pages and pages of incomprehension and would require a huge effort to stay awake.

I have been having a debate (inside my head of course) on how to fashion my own papers’ authorship. I am caught between professors suggesting that the use of adjectives (that are not supported by thoroughly documented, concrete proof) are unacceptable in technical papers and my own style of writing which involves thought provoking dialogue and allusions. I have been told that colorful language based explanations and descriptions do not belong in a technical paper.

I have had to read many papers in school. Let me rephrase that. I have had to labor through many papers in school. Even though the subject matter was exciting, reading most of those papers took considerable effort and led to patchy comprehension. Consequently, absorbing and later using that information was simply painful.

Having been through this pain, I shudder to think that my own work is going to turn out to be this way. I have had some support from professors encouraging me to write the way I want to (as long as I maintain some boundaries) and I am hoping that my work will be different, however slightly.